Infection
by Linzerj
Summary: Stanley gets so caught up in trying to bring his brother back as soon as he can that he almost forgets about his burn until it's too late. (Or: a short drabble in which Stanley's burn becomes infected soon after Stanford is sucked through the portal.)


**Infection**

Stanley gets so caught up in trying to bring his brother back as soon as he can that he almost forgets about his burn until it's too late.

Sure, the fresh wound still smolders and sizzles and stings for the first few days, but it's in such an awkward-to-reach spot near his shoulder blade that Stanley patches it with gauze and some cream as best he can, and then ignores it, focused on bringing Stanford back from that portal. Without the other two journals, he doesn't have much hope, but he rifles through the physics and math textbooks left around his brother's house in an attempt to _somewhat_ understand how the hell this thing works.

Then the fatigue and fever kick in, and Stanley is no doctor but he knows this is _not good_.

Sure enough, when he scrambles to a mirror and rips off his so-so patchwork job, the burn shows signs of infection; the lines of whatever symbol has been branded into him have taken a purplish tint, the whole area has begun to swell, and there is a greenish discharge coming from the area.

And – how is he supposed to treat this by himself? He needs antibiotics for the infection, and the burn itself should probably be looked at because he paid almost zero attention to it right after he got it, distraught as he was.

But then he remembers that _he has no money to pay a doctor_. Sure, Stanford's obviously got money somewhere, but he can't just – can't just take his brother's money, can he?

He finds some amoxicillin in a medicine cabinet, and takes some – it hasn't expired, and he's not sure why Stanford has it, but at this point he's hoping that this will at least help him through the next few days until he can figure out what to do. He puts bandages back over the wound, and makes a point of sleeping on his side instead of his back, like he usually does.

It does nothing.

He slowly starts to run out of food, and as the infection takes hold he runs out of energy, too. Stanley can't focus on _anything,_ much less something as complicated as his brother's portal.

It gets to the point where he can't hold any food down; he can barely move to get to the bathroom, and it's all he can do to keep changing the bandages and forcing down a few more pills of whatever he can find that might help.

And in his feverish daze, he starts running all the events that led up to this through his head over and over again.

It's not like he had _meant_ to ruin Stanford's science project ten years ago. He had tried to screw the grate he'd knocked off back on, and it had still been moving when he'd left it. From what he'd learned after being kicked out, the grate had fallen off again and the machine had stopped moving. The grate must have been significant if it could make a perpetual motion machine stop moving, and he must not have screwed it back in very well if it had fallen off again during the night.

 _He hadn't meant to do that._ He didn't want to sabotage his brother's dreams, because twins are supposed to stick together and support each other. It had been an accident, but neither his brother nor his father were willing to listen.

And maybe – maybe he should have called sooner, apologized to Stanford sooner? His father would probably never accept an apology anyway – the old man was as stubborn as a brick – but maybe, _maybe_ , if he had called just a year ago, they wouldn't be in this mess.

Not like he did anything worthwhile during those ten years anyway. Jail wasn't all that great, trying to come up with fake IDs was tiring, and living in constant worry of where his next meal would come from or where he would sleep that night was just _awful_ in every way.

Maybe, if he'd patched things up sooner…maybe he could have convinced his brother to _not_ build this portal thing in the first place. He could have…could have helped his brother with whatever research he was doing here. (He would take creepy supernatural creatures over Colombian jail and sleeping in his car any day.)

They…they would have been a family again. It wouldn't have ended like this – Stanford trapped on one side of the mysterious portal that was now burned out, with no way to come home, and Stanley being destroyed from the inside because of a damned infection that snuck its way into the burn (brand) on his shoulder.

And….and…damn it all, _it was all Stanley's fault_. He shouldn't have waited so long, shouldn't have focused on his own problems way back when, should have _tried to freaking talk to Stanford when he walked in the house instead of almost taking a crossbow to the face and just shrugging it off and – and –_

His thoughts trailed off as Stanley hunched over, sobs wracking his body as tears streamed down his face. Because it was, it was his fault, _all of it was his fault_ – he could have fixed this, avoided this, gone about this in a way where Stanford didn't get sucked into that portal – and he was going to _die_ here, alone, the greatest failure in the world.

He closed his still-damp eyes, and let the darkness take him. So what if he didn't wake. His brother may not have survived going through that portal anyway. For all he knew, Stanford was already dead. He could apologize to him in the next life – for ruining his project, for being a stubborn selfish ass, for getting him killed, for not being there when he was needed the most.

He woke the next morning, sore and still sick, and he has mixed feelings about it.

The food ran out, and he had to draw together all his strength to try and drag himself out of the shack and downtown to the nearest convenience store. Really, all he wanted was the bread, but some woman noticed him and mistook him for his brother (which really, it shouldn't have been so surprising, they were twins after all), and then they were offering him money, and-

He brightened, and led them on a tour, and the group gave him money and he went back out and bought not only bread but also milk and water jugs and soup and crackers and some actual medicine and bandages and salve that might help more. He got back and almost collapsed, but he had supplies, now, that would get him through another week or two, give him another chance to _fix this_.

The fever eventually breaks, he fakes his own death and officially takes his brother's name, gets himself to a doctor and says it was an accident with his machines, gets some antibiotics and goes back a few weeks later with a clean bill of health, starts up the Murder Hut – later renamed the Mystery Shack – and on the surface, all is well.

But he's got the reminder of his previous failures hidden under his clothes, branded into his shoulder for eternity. The mark is forever tinged purple from the infection he had, and it doesn't fade after ten, twenty, thirty years.

And that drive to find the other journals, the desire to reactivate the portal despite all his brother's warnings, the need to _bring his brother home_ , they sweep in and take hold like a chronic plague, draining him on some days and giving him reason to push through on others, always lingering in the background of everything he does.

He's failed too many times already. He needs to succeed in this, so that he can cure himself once and for all.


End file.
